It is known to provide printhead circuits for printers such as inkjet printers. For example, the inkjet industry has been working on how to drive piezoelectric printhead actuating elements for more than twenty years. Multiple drive methods have been produced and there are multiple different types in use today Some are briefly discussed now.
Hot Switch: This is the class of driving methods that keep the demux function and the power dissipation (CV^2) in the same driver IC. This was the original drive method, before cold switch became popular.
Rectangular Hot Switch: This describes hot switch systems that have no flexible control over rise and fall time and only two voltages (0V and 30V for example). In some cases waveform delivery is uniform to all the actuating chambers. The waveform has some level of programmability.
DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) Hot Switch describes a class of drive options that has a logic driving an arbitrary digital value stream to a DAC per actuating chamber, outputs a high voltage drive power waveform scaled from this digital stream. In terms of driving flexibility, this option has the most capability. It is limited only by the number of digital gates and the complexity that system designers can use and/or tolerate.
Cold Switch Demux: This describes an arrangement in which all actuating elements are fed the same drive signal through a pass gate type demultiplexer. The drive signal can be gated at sub-pixel speeds.
It is also known to provide some factory calibration of differences between individual actuating chambers and to provide compensation by trimming the drive signal applied to the different actuating elements. Such trimming can be by time division of a common drive circuit or by separate control of individual drive circuits for each of the actuating elements.
US 2005200639 shows a printer with driver circuitry for actuating elements using a common drive waveform applied to one side of the actuating elements and with switches for coupling the other side of the actuating elements to a common return path. The switches are controlled to switch on sloping edges of pulses of the common drive waveform to adjust a height of the pulses, for an array of actuating elements. Adjustments can be made for each printed line so that blocks (a 2×2 array of nozzles) can be varied around an average weighting.